Sworn
by 95Echelon
Summary: A boy and a horcrux grew up in a cupboard. A boy and a horcrux went to Hogwarts. A boy and a horcrux were destined for great things. This is their story.
1. begin

Two shadows unfurl on a road  
In a town named Taarkol.

The bastard sons, bequeathed,  
By the darkness, perhaps.

The ground flees their footsteps  
The sky, wrenched from above.

Their life, crushed underheel,  
Is all remained of their legacy.

\- Gulzar (translated)

* * *

**Prologue**

In the very beginning, there was only Tom.

_(there was a flash of green and screaming and cold, _**_cold_**_ laughter but Tom hated it something fierce and Harry tried not to think about it)_

Only Tom.

Tom's hand rubbing circles on his back when Aunt Petunia yelled at him;

Tom's thin fingers clutching Harry's trembling, sweaty hands as hard as Harry needed when Uncle Vernon raised a fat, meaty fist;

Tom whispering in Harry's ears to '_Run_, Harry! **Run!**' when Dudley's gang approached, and twisting Harry's head around to yell a retort at the lumbering idiot of his cousin, who'd would never recognise it for the insult it was;

Tom stretching a triumphant smirk across Harry's face;

And running with Harry,  
_running, running, thundering blood in his veins_,  
a joyous mirth etched in Harry's bright, _bright_ eyes.

* * *

a/n:

Chapters will be brutally short because I have a job now and I don't know what to do with that. *sigh*  
Read, review, favorite, you know the drill.

Edit after Chapter9:  
so the chapters get longer the more emotionally invested i get in this damn thing.


	2. filth

You are better than this **_filth_**.

Tom would say that sometimes, angry, trembling in Harry's bones, as they lay, all twisted into a tiny ball, on a lumpy, stained mattress, in a cupboard under the stairs.

They deserve nothing. **Nothing!**

You're special, and better, and they should… they should _die_, Harry! _They all should **DIE!**_

And Harry would worry at the venom in Tom's thoughts and remind him of funny little Maisie Donovan who always sat next to him in Year One, and shared her trip-choc-chip biscuits-

(our first friend, Tom, our very first, she should live, right?)

But he never waited for Tom's response, pressing forward; remembering kind, pretty Miss Hamilton who fussed over Harry in kindergarten, blonde wisps of hair forever escaping her bun and catching the sunlight prettily, like an angel's halo.

There are no angels, Harry. _Nobody's ever gonna save us._

And Harry would ignore that as best as he could, trying not to remember acid green lights and a woman screaming Harry's name, trying not to make his heart clench painfully in his little chest, the ache worse than broken bones.

Nobody's _ever_ coming for us, Harry.  
Nobody's _ever_ saving us.  
We are going to have to save ourselves.

_You want to be saved, don't you?_


	3. focus

He sits a ways from the rest of his classmates during recess, his numeracy workbook sneaked away from the class and carefully placed in front of him, ensconced in the little alcove between the caretaker's shed and the low stone wall that ran the south perimeter of the Surrey Grammar Harry attended.

You can do this.

You've done it before.

Focus now.

Focus!

There is only the book. Only the book, Harry. Can you see it? (i see it) Nothing but the book. Just the book. What do you see, Harry? (the book) Now let the book rise up. Can you let it float up, up, up? (up. up. UP!)

The workbook rockets upwards, like a pilot ejected from a fighter jet, urgent, zooming up into the azure sky.

Now hold the book. Hold the book! HOLD IT! (stay. stay.)

The book flutters downwards, idle and pliant, like a leaf floating in a summer breeze, belying its weight. When it reaches Harry's eye level, it stays, tethered by Harry's will, simple and strong and all that is necessary.

Good, Harry, very, very good.

Tom's pleasure seeps through Harry, viscous and hot and brilliant, and Harry blinks through the sweet pleasure-haze that clouds him, the book still floating in the air.

And now, let it go.

The book falls, the thump hard and heavy. A cloud of dust rises to meet Harry's nostrils. He rubs them, and as the recess bell sounds, shoves the dusty thing under his oversized shirt, hurrying towards his classroom.

The thump of the book echoes in his ears for a long while.

In his mind, the sound morphs into something wet, a heavy squelch, like a body released from a great height. His mouth tastes bitter.


	4. better

(i will not do it. i will not _let_ you do it.)

What? Why? Do you… Do you **WANT** for us to stay here? FOREVER?

(tom. tom. no. we cannot do this. we cannot… _kill_ them. **_tom_**. )

YOU STUPID, STUPID BOY. I WILL NOT DIE IN THIS HOME. I WILL NOT LET YOU DIE HERE.

Harry racks his brain for the right words, he needs the right words, because this isn't Tom, _not his Tom._ (tom is sarcastic and flippant and scarily intelligent and giving, so, _so giving_, tom would give someone he loved anything, everything, the world. harry doesn't know all the right words, but tom's love is a terrifying, wonderful thing. harry will fight for it.) He loves Tom, more than he has ever loved anyone, and he won't LET. TOM. DO. THIS.

(because you're better than this. you are better than them. tom, damn you, listen-) and Harry is grabbing Tom by his - metaphysical - collar, and Tom's face swims in Harry's vision, blurry and out of focus and Harry's most precious thing, (listen to me! you are smart, so, so fucking smart and you can figure this out. is… is murder-) the word is heavy on Harry's lips (murder the only option? **_think_**, goddamit. use that bloody big head of yours. tell me there isn't a better plan.)

And Harry waits, short of breath, gasping and sweaty and terrified and mad for this broken boy, and Tom is calm, eerily calm, and then he's saying, feverish and wide eyed and rapid-

Yes. Yes. There is.

Harry, there **is**.

We can make them do things.

Things.

_Whatever we want._

**_Imperio._**

And then Tom is fainting dead away, his dead weight insubstantial in Harry's grasp, before fading out of view. For the first time in as long as Harry can remember, his mind is shockingly, utterly quiet. In the stillness of the cupboard, in the darkness of the night, in the silence of his mind, Harry waits.


	5. imperio

(imperio) Harry's hands are impatient on the cutting board, slicing mushroom and spinach for omelettes, flipping toasts and pancakes on the slightly-too-high stovetop with practised ease. (imperio, tom, is not a real word.) He neatly folds the three-egg omelettes, for Vernon, a stack of pancakes drenched in butter and maple syrup for Dudley, and a bowl of fruit for Aunt Petunia. (imperio, tom. what the hell is imperio? TELL ME!) He arranges the table, grabs a few slices of toast and half a glass of cold milk, and leaves the kitchen, quiet and unobtrusive. (tom does not reply. harry bites back an aching sob.)

It has been three weeks of silence.

The quiet deafens Harry's mind.


	6. adorable

Harry stares at the little cottontail, at its big blue eyes, at its soft fluffy feet. It looks…. warm.

(up)

The rabbit rises into the air. It scrambles, feet pinwheeling frantically in the air. It almost looks funny. Harry almost smiles.

(over)

The rabbit turns upside down, downy, pink stomach exposed upwards. It is trembling, terrified. Almost idly, Harry thinks that if it could speak, it would scream now.

(do not breathe)

The spasms of the cottontail lessen by degree, its panicked convulsions giving way to stillness. It hovers limply, at eye level, in the little alcove, where Harry first floated a maths workbook.

(fall)

The rabbit is gently brought to the ground.

(breathe)

Harry gets up, and walks away. Later, the kids from Year One find their class rabbit, asleep near the garden shed. They wonder how he escaped his hutch, but the general consensus is that he is still adorably fluffy and everyone is pleased.

(harry wonders when tom will come back to him.)


	7. silence

_Imagine, _

_if you can, _

_the thundering silence in your mind, _

_with no one to fill the gaps between your thoughts. _

He turned to other things then, the boy named Harry James Potter. Other, quieter things.

There was the time he studied for a test and got perfect marks, and when Aunt Petunia raised a ironcast saucepan at the nine year old boy, he looked at her, just _looked and looked_ and she was filled with such terrible, bone shaking fright, that she turned away and never said a word.

There was the time Dudley and his gang cornered Jimmy Perkins on the playground and Harry had looked at them and said "_No_, Dudley. **_You may not._**" And then Piers, Dudley's right hand man, had screamed and blood had streamed from his nose in a bright, scarlet rivulet and nobody moved, nobody breathed and Harry said, "Come on Jimmy," and Jimmy came, willingly placing his hand in Harry's, looking up at him with wide, brown eyes and said, "Thanks Harry," all fervent and amazed, and Harry, just for a moment, felt the ache Tom had left, recede for a moment.

(there was also the time the Dursleys' pet cat, Clementine, ended up dead, her neck twisted unnaturally, in the upstairs bedroom after Vernon backhanded Harry for burning his toast 'you **goddamn** bloody useless **_freak!_**'. the Dursleys never bought a pet again.)

(harry never cooked again either.)


	8. home

(I can't)

He gets off the school bus, and stares at the suburban utopia that is Privet Drive, a keening anguish filled in his ears.

(tom, i _can't._)

Isn't it odd, how your voice can tremble even in your mind?

His vision blurs with unshed tears, and everywhere, Tom's image is superimposed, caressing rosebuds in Aunt Petunia's garden, singing songs Harry's never heard anywhere except in his mind when they couldn't sleep at night, fixing a robin's broken wing one summer, staring at the stars from Mrs. Figg's backyard another winter.  
Tom, beautiful, angry, smart and always scared, always, always, _**always**__.  
_And he **can't** _bear _it, can't _bear _being surrounded by Tom's memories, but _never_ hearing him, _never_ listening to his laugh, _never_ feeling the cascading brilliance of his smile. And tremors run down his tiny ten-year-old frame and then he's saying-

(i'm leaving. do you hear me? LISTEN TO ME DAMN YOU!)

Hot, salty tears stream down his face, warmed by the bright spring sunlight and Harry stands at the corner of Number Two, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, shaking and coughing and crying and screaming in his mind-

(I'M LEAVING! It was never my home - not without you - and tom- _**TOM! **_I'M LEAVING!)

And then there is a **_sound_**, a thundering **BOOM-CRASH! **

And Tom is screaming back-  
HARRY! HARRY! OH FUCKING CHRIST HARRYHARRYHARRY-

And Tom is screaming in Harry's mind, or maybe Harry's screaming in Tom's mind.  
And the gravel of the footpath lurches towards Harry, or maybe it's Harry who's falling towards the footpath, _falling, falling, drowning in his own mind.  
_And there is an instant of sharp pain, and then there is darkness.

* * *

In two somewheres, two thousand miles away each, two things happen.

In the first somewhere, a younger man looks at an older man and says, "We have activity. Surrey. Shall I send an agent?"

And in the second somewhere, another younger man looks at another older man and says, "We have a lock on Harry Potter's location."


	9. song

It is _cold._

That's his first thought, when he awakens, curled into a ball on a stone floor, the air frosty and biting.

Rough-hewn gray stones form high walls on three sides, the fourth wall dominated a massive door, a strong wooden affair, as tall as three of Harry, chipped and nicked in a hundred places. On the opposite wall, a high window, perhaps half a foot tall and twice as wide, lets in slanted moonbeams that curl ghost-bright in the air. It's barely a room, more a solid block of gray stone that someone grudgingly carved a livingspace into.

The cell is entirely bare, save for Harry himself, hunched over folded knees and staring wide-eyed, mute with shock, moonlight reflected in his eyes.

The air is musty and damp, the window flooding Harry's nostrils with the sharp scents of resin and pine and fresh snow.

Harry?

(tom?)

Harry, where _are we?_

(i- i don't know.)

We blacked out?

(we must've. tom, it's _cold. _It's _summer. _It shouldn't _be _this cold.)

It shouldn't. Well, then, try the door, I suppose.

(Tom has always been admirably practical. There's no point trying to figure the whys and wherefores when you're wading knee deep in shit. Get out first, contemplate later. It's a rule that has unfailingly worked for them.)

_(except when Tom __**left **__and Harry didn't know- didn't know anything- and there was pain and hollowness and then Piers bled and Clementine __**died OHOHGOD- **__and Jimmy adored Harry- Harry, who's a worthless fuck up, who deserves nothing- __**nothing-**__)_

Harry pads over to the door and pushes, feebly at first, throwing himself bodily at it next, shouting in pain when he awkwardly bangs his thin shoulder against the heavy wood.

There is no latch on the inside. They've been locked in.

Luckily, (ha! "_luckily_"!) Harry is no stranger to being locked in small, dark, cold places.

Harry-  
Tom says, and the timbre of his voice is beautifully familiar.

Focus now.

Focus.

You've done this before.

You can do it again.

And Harry is placing a trembling hand on the warm oaken door, and he can **_feel_** it's weight, heavy and solid and ancient, and around it, the steadfastness of old stone, and then, _there, __**there! **_The faint, hyperactive buzzing of cold metal, shaped into a padlock, but this is _different._

Harry has opened a hundred locks, and he knows them; sometimes they will be excited, like metal always is, sometimes charged with a _protect-protect-protect_ instinct, like a staccato steel heartbeat. This, though...

This metal **_sings. _**It sings of iron shields and crackling domes of defense, of great guardian gods. And Tom **_knows the song. _**He knows the words to the song and _nothing makes sense anymore. _And Tom is singing back to the metal and the song comes away with a faint buzz-crackle that can feels, a visceral lightning spark on the palm of his hand resting against the door. There is a muted click and then the door is swinging open soundlessly into a dark corridor, paved with enormous granite flagstones, the only illumination a faint firelit torch in the far distance.

The padlock glints in the faint moonlight and Harry sees a design scatched roughyl into its bronzed face. He picks it up, with both hands because it's massive and heavy and when he strokes a thumb lightly over the... _thing_, he can almost hear faint strains of the song again.

And Tom is shaking, vibrating, pupils blown wide and gasping, and whispering to Harry, reverentially, like in prayer-

Harry. **_Magic._**

* * *

a/n:

god i sincerely apologize for all the unnecessary weird updates. i had formatting issues and decided to get nitpicky.  
r&amp;r, if you like (or don't like) (or hate) (whatever, really)  
'night, folks!


	10. cliché

_In a dark mysterious castle somewhere the author won't tell you more about_

Can I point out that this is the most cliché-est castle _ever_?  
(now's really not a good time, tom)

Harry trudges down the corridor, torch held high in one sweaty palm, when it suddenly terminates in a winding staircase. Tom climbs the uneven stairs beside him, ghostly-pale (and really, very bored) in the corner of Harry's eye.

We were in the _dungeons.  
_Now we're going up a mysterious staircase.  
All alone in a dark, stone castle.  
_On a moonlit night.  
_Really, Harry, all this story needs now is...

The staircase ends in a massive vaulted arch, opening into an enormous glass-panelled solar, entirely at odds with the medieval castle. A man, tall and cloaked in a sweeping black robe stands at one end, facing away from Harry. His silhouette is dark against the silverbright mountains beyond him.

...is Dracula.  
Ah damn. I should've kept my damn mouth shut, shouldn't I?  
(probably, yeah.)

* * *

_Meanwhile at Privet Drive_

It's late in the evening, the sky washed with dull orange and bruise-purple.  
Two people sit in a car, an older scruffy man, and what one might presume is his daughter. They're parked near Number Two in a battered Citrön, tinted windows shielding them from the curious onlookers in the quiet cul-de-sac.

"Are you seein' this, kid?"

"Off the charts, absolutely." The 'kid' in question nods her head, her eyes glued to a scrap of parchment she holds in her hand, on which letters and numbers and runes whiz by. She frowns heavily at the paper, as though it has done her personal injury. "Do we inform Father?"

"Inform him what? Oh _Daddy-" _his voice turning high-pitched and mocking, "_Daddy, the numbers are all wonky. What should you poor, helpless princess do now?"_

"Oh be quiet. Look, you see this radius?" she asks, impatiently, pointing to a squiggle on the parchment, which is finally resting on an incomprehensible series of characters. (It seems to make perfect sense to _her_.)

"Yeah?"

"It's the _blast radius. _Look around you," she says, waving haphazardly at the quiet, British neighbourhood. A bird chirps somewhere. "Do you see anything that suggests this kind of explosive magic?"

"Christ on a candlestick. This place ought to be vaporized."

"Exactly, Forty-Seven. Thank you. Which means-"

"Protections. Shit. Heavy-duty shielding, yeah? Grade B10 stuff. B11, even, maybe."

"Exactly. I'm thinking A1 actually. Maybe A2." She looks at him, the serious concern on her young face much better suited to someone a decade older. "And get this- Right after the explosion, if I'm not wrong, there was a series of apparitions. It's hard to make them out, the explosion left so much **_noise_**_,_ and I'm **still** getting feedback from the mess it made, but-" She makes a series of decisive taps against the parchment and then- "Ah! Yes, here, one apparated in and two apparated out."

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

"Yeah." Her eyes are grim. "Whichever poor muggleborn kid did this, someone detected it before us. Someone came here before us. Someone took him - or her - before us."

"Someone was waiting for this, you mean. Someone was keeping an eye out for this kid."

"Yes."

"Well. Shit."

* * *

In the drafty castle, a few thousand miles away, a man in a dark cloak turns to a small, scared and stupidly brave boy. He is lit in stark relief , against a backdrop of glass wall and soaring mountains. He smiles, close-lipped, and says, "Hello, Harry Potter. Did you not like your accommodations?"


	11. saving

This is what happened.

A boy and a horcrux were reunited.

A girl and a man heard an explosion.

But when the girl and the man went seeking the source of the explosion (the boy and the horcrux), they found the latter had been whisked away to a dark castle tucked away in the Blackforests of Germany.

So the girl called her father, and her father called many men who were very good at killing. And in this manner, a girl named Hermione Granger stormed a castle to save a boy named Harry Potter and a horcrux named Tom Riddle (though she didn't find out about the horcrux until much later).

Only when she stormed the castle, with men-very-good-at-killing at her flanks, she found a boy sitting cross-legged in an enormous solar, his face upturned towards the moonlight that streamed silverbright through the windows, an unbreathing body lying next to him.

"Hello", she says to him, cautious of this boy who can apparently make unbreathing bodies of the people who whisk him away.  
"Hello," he says to her, cautious of this girl who can apparently command soldiers and storm castles.  
"We're here to rescue you," she hedges, wondering if he even needs rescuing at all.  
"Rescue me to where?" He wonders if the rescue involves going back to Privet Drive. (In which case they'll just stay here, thanks. There must be food somewhere.)

"There is a place in London," she says, still low and careful, testing his reaction. (His face is infuriatingly blank). "They have taken... an interest in you. They would like to recruit you to an agency that protects the nation. If you should choose to accept, they will provide food, lodging and further education. Are you amenable to this proposition?"

(Tom notes that this is, by far, the most interesting nine year old they've met.)

Say yes to this one. If things don't go safely... Well.

(Harry's mind flashes to the moment when they had levitated their captor into the air, tightened the vise around his neck. The sharp 'crack' of a broken neck. The hard thud of a body hitting stone. Sinking to the stone floor on weak knees while the rushing thunderbeat of his heart filled his ears. The faint song of starlight as it streamed through the windows and touched his face.)

Tom grins, predatory in Harry's mind.

Trouble can be handled, Harry.

(Something in Harry _yearns_ \- like a bird that's had its wings snapped - like he just lost something without knowing how or why. He tries not to think of the man who lies in a broken heap behind them. He tries not to think of anything much, tries to let the sweetness of hear Tom's voice fill up all the aches in his chest.)

So he turns to the girl, and says, "Take me to London," and she hands him a coin, and there is a tug at his navel, and a blurred rush of sound and space and time, and then, out of nowhere, he is standing at the portico of an enormous blue-grey mansion, the girl beside him. He realizes he still doesn't know her name.

Tom vibrates with tense, happy excitement.  
Harry feels bile_ burn_ at the back of his throat. The crack of his kidnapper's neck echoes over and over and _fucking** over, **_a horrific wet squelch of muscle and blood and broken bone.

She rings a doorbell, and the doors swing open, and she turns to him, a grin tucked into the side of her mouth, oblivious to his silent torment, and says, "Welcome to The Merlin Offices."


	12. recruit

"Well. What do we do?"  
"Test him, of course. If he survives, we can send him to Recon. Assign a Grifter to train him."  
"A Grifter, really? He's only ten, Dom."

She is grey and old, and he is too, as befits agents of their calibre. The Merlin Offices very much value their old dogs. It means they know how to stay alive through the many morally questionable missions they're sent on, and that's really quite good enough, thanks.

"Hmph," he says. His face is a waterfall of waxy, soft wrinkles. "Granger brought _Potter_ to my doorstep, Deb. I ain't goin' halfway with the boy."  
"Very well, Dom," she says, resignedly, although her voice is terribly fond. "Recon, if he survives the tests. Heaven help him."

* * *

The door to the manor house swings open on soundless hinges. Beyond, the hallway is dim, red-carpeted, a crystal candelabra refracting miniscule rainbows onto the glossy marble walls. The air smells like dust.

A girl and a boy (and we mustn't forget the horcrux) step in.  
But when the door bangs shut behind them, the girl is gone.

The test begins.

* * *

"STOP, DOM!" the woman called Deb screams, in a dark room, and Dom stops. He breathes heavily, once, twice before collapsing back into his chair. She sits down too, gracelessly, her heart racing.

"Unnatural," he mutters. "Unnatural, that boy is."  
"What _are_ you bloody going on about? He aced every goddamn test you threw at him. That boy's going to be the best Recon recruit we've ever sent in."  
"Aye," he mumbles, his frail body nearly folding in on itself in his plush chair. "Shouldn't'a aced it. Shouldn't'a… 'Tis unnatural, Debbie."

She doesn't respond, staring at him with unknowing eyes.  
He looks at her, and his eyes are bloodshot, grave… _scared._ "You wouldn't understand."

* * *

Slowly, painfully, Harry levers himself off the hard, marble floor. His arms shake uncontrollably. Sweat drips off his brow in a constant stream, turning pink where it meets blood. The salt stings his open wounds.

Breathe! Breathe! Still, Harry, be still, yes, yes what do you hear?  
(nothing!)  
**LISTEN!  
**(i- i- voices? voices. the songs!)  
Magic, yes, yes, you can hear it. Listen, _listen,_ find your way out, come **_on_**.

Tom presses a soft hand to the small of his back, and the world recedes to that pulsepoint of warmth. His eyes droop shut. The songs dance around him, pirouetting streams of golden light, like ballet underwater, swift pulsing currents of terrible beauty. He latches on to them, and they whisper- _hello! hellohellohello! come on comewithus yessss hellohello this way run away run away little run-a-way! - _little fairy voices, wicked and capricious and childlike and ancient.

Harry walks among them, blindly seeking the song that will let him escape the dark room that seems bursting with horrors. A part of him is aware of his body standing, and walking, on legs that are too tired, too weak. He is barely aware of falling, of the sharp _**crack!**_ of a bone breaking, of picking himself up anyway, hobbling in time to the voices.

_comewithus yesyes this way! sing little snakechild sing to us singsingsi-_

HARRY!  
His back arches violently, his mind shudders; he snaps back to himself. He returns to Tom.  
(wh- what?)  
We're out.

The hallway is the same; red carpet and marble floor. The crystal candelabra seems forlorn in the high, arched ceiling. The air tastes like dust. Harry walks to the door he'd entered - minutes? hours? …_**days ago?**_ \- and wraps a hand around the cold, brass handle.

We're out, thank _god_, Harry, we're-

They wrench the door open.  
The room beyond the door is dark. A woman, ancient and slender and slightly stooped, stands on the other side. She smiles, benevolently. In the corner of Harry's eye, Tom turns feral, crouching and growling like a wild, caged animal.

Letmeout letmeout LET ME _OUT!_

Harry does not react. His broken leg sends a fresh ripple of pain up his body.  
"Hello, Mr. Potter," she says. Her voice reminds Harry, oddly, of an autumn breeze, apple-scented and bitingly cold.  
Harry smiles back blandly. Tom bares his teeth; his eyes flash red.  
"You did very well on your tests."

Filthy fucking _bitch_. Let me OUT!

She extends a weathered hand across the threshold of the room. A plain golden band glints dully on her fourth finger. There is no fifth finger. Harry raises an eyebrow, but grasps it anyway, his grip firm, if a little sweaty, a little bloody. "Shall we have that leg looked at?" she asks, beckoning him into the room.

Harry smiles, an economical, salesman's smile, nods once, and limps into the room. When the door bangs shut, for a brief, frightening moment, he's assaulted by the memory of the things he saw There, in the Room, of acrid, rolling deserts, of drowning, of the sharp, gnawing ache of starvation, of the slippery hot pain of his guts being eaten alive by misshapen, grinning monsters, of the thousand nightmares it has burned him through.

Just as soon, it's gone.  
Harry resets.

"Where am I?" he asks, because the girl is gone, and it seems like a good idea.  
"Oh Mr. Potter, didn't she tell you? The Merlin Offices. Congratulations on your recruitment."  
"My recruitment?"  
"Oh yes." From behind her, seemingly from the shadows, a man steps forward. "Meet your new mentor."

His hair is grizzled, his face, heavily scarred. Half his nose, and most of his left leg, is missing. In place of where an eye should be, a bulbous glass ball is stuffed into the socket. The pupil is electric blue, whizzing around like a mad pinball.  
"'Ello, boy," he says, his voice as rough and cracked as the rest of him. "Know what a Grifter is?"  
The capital-ness of the 'G' is obvious in his tone. Harry shakes his head mutely.  
Even Tom is silent.

"Idiot," he mutters, frowning at Harry. "Broke your leg, eh? Stupid move." He pivots on a heel, with surprising grace.  
"Come on, then," he calls out, when Harry makes no move.  
Harry follows, hobbling and wincing, dripping bloodstained sweat on the carpet, little black droplets in the dark of the room.

"Oh, an' call me Mad-Eye," the man says, as Harry hurries to catch up. "They all do."

* * *

**a/n:  
**I update regularly, what are you talking about? ._.


	13. nightcrawl

The letter reaches him on his eleventh birthday, in Dubai, on a sweltering desert night, when the blood of his last target is still dripping from his hair, still caking under his fingernails.

_To Harry Potter,_ it says,  
_The Master Bath  
__Third Floor  
__The Fahadi covenhouse_

Harry cleans his hands under a gold faucet and inspects his face where the mirror isn't liberally streaked with crimson spray. The pale, naked body of the Alpha vampire floats in the claw-foot tub next to him, lilac eyes wide open, shocked in death. The water is tinted a pretty pink, blood oozing viscously from the puncture wounds Harry's arrows have left in his chest.

He turns to owl, and unties the letter, stroking his feathers and thanking him. The owl nips him softly, and takes to the night through the bath's open skylight.

* * *

**Six months ago**

"Harry Potter is dead," Mad-Eye says.  
Harry blinks.  
"You can choose a new name, a new… face. Anything you want. A new start, if you want it."

(i like harry, though.)  
I like Harry too.

Harry falters, breathes slow and deep, and breaches an unspoken barrier.  
(we could take your last name?)  
Mine?  
(if- if- you have one right?)  
I- ah. Riddle. Tom Riddle.  
(riddle. i like that.)  
You… do?  
(it suits you.)

Harry shrugs mentally, and refocuses, Mad-Eye whizzing pinball eye a blurry electric storm, contained in fragile glass. Harry can hear the eye… _scream?_ A quiet foreboding curls in his gut, but his face is blank, unlined.

"Harry," he says, to the grizzled old warhound. "Harry Riddle."

Mad-Eye cocks an eyebrow, but nods anyway.

* * *

**Five months ago**

The night is balmy, the air laden with moisture and the tang of sea-salt. The curtains of the house they watch haven't fluttered in hours. Inside the car, Harry sips from a sweating can of coke, loading up on sugar and caffeine to keep him awake through the stakeout.

Mad-Eye is quiet.  
"How did they really die? My parents?"

Harry can feel Mad-Eye's gaze shift to him. He does not look back at him, staring out of the window, and at the dark house, waiting. There is a long silence; the weight of his mentor's eyes burning a hole straight through him.

Finally- "Does it matter, Riddle?"  
(does it matter?)

They consider the matter in their mind, weighing Mad-Eye's words, turning them over like an antique dealer with a delicate Tang vase. Slow, methodical, unhurried.

"No," he replies.

The watch goes on, until the sun dawns over Miami's ocean horizon, pale pink shot with gold.

* * *

**Four months ago**

"You scored higher."

Harry looks up from his dinner plate, irritated. Tom is squirming with excitement.

_(traitor.)  
_Oh shut up. This one's _interesting._

Hermione looms over them, hair tightly contained in a severe bun, frowning as though her lower test score - on _marksmanship_ of all things - is somehow Harry's fault. He's better with guns and bows and arrows, jesus, how women's minds work is going to forever remain a mystery to him.

"Yes," he says, because really- What else is he supposed to say?

"You want to know how, don't you?" Tom bursts out and- Oh. Apparently, that's what he's supposed to say, because Hermione's expression instantly turns, well, less murderous.

Terrible, _terrible_ flirt, my goodness Harry; we'll need to work on that.  
(ugh, _why?_)  
You'll thank me later.

"Yes," she says, and throws in a decisive nod for good measure, and- oh, where were they? Marksmanship, right. How to aim better. Tips for Hermione.

"What's in it for me?"  
"I can tell you the truth about Harry Potter."  
"Don't care." Harry/Riddle shrugs, chewing his steak meditatively.  
"You don't," she repeats.  
He shrugs again. Spears some broccoli on his fork. _Blech.  
_"What do you want?"  
"Tell me about… Grindelwald. Grindelwald and Dumbledore. The Merlin Offices' version."  
"That's _old._ And _classified_."

"So?"

She smirks, and settles next to him.

* * *

**Three months ago**

"Your first target, Mr. Riddle," the woman named Deborah says. She slides him a brown file stamped 'CLASSFIED' in smudged, red letters across the aluminium table. The fluorescent strip lighting overhead and the industrial grey carpeting under his feet reeks of corporate sterility. The room is windowless, and Deborah's face is cast is harsh shadows.

Harry flips open the file, rapidly turning pages, letting Tom scan them. He'll let Harry know what he needs to.  
It's very convenient, having a resident genius in your head.

_Excuse me?  
_(well. i don't just keep you around cause you're pretty, Tom.)  
Oh my _God.  
_*effeminate cackling*  
Focus will you? Your target is… the Indian ambassador to Britain? Wait, what?  
(muggle?)  
…what? Oh no. No. Magical. Pankaj Patil. Born in New Delhi, raised in Johannesburg where his father worked with MSF.  
(the doctor thing?)  
Yes - (harry can _feel_ the eyeroll) - Medicins Sans Frontières. the 'doctor thing'. Good Lord, child.  
(we're the same age!)  
Clearly, not. _Anyway_, he's… god, he's clean, Harry. A good guy. Halfblood, but that hasn't hampered his progress; an excellent diplomat, best trade relations between the two countries in half a century. This kill makes… no sense.

"Why him?"  
Wait- what- you can't just **ask** her, Harry!  
(watch me.)  
_Such_ a Gryffindor.  
(…what?)  
Never you mind.

"What do you mean, Mr. Riddle?"  
"Are your agents not in the habit of asking questions, Ms. Deborah?"  
"No."  
"Pity," and one of Tom's smirks curls onto Harry's face with practised ease. "Get used to it. Why him?"  
"Because that is your _assignment_, Mr. Riddle." Her eyes narrow slightly. Harry imagines the expression would be terrifying to anyone else. It makes him want to giggle madly. He doesn't - barely.

"I won't kill without reason." Harry slides the folder back to her, and settles back in the hard metal chair. He smiles, teeth bared.  
"You _will_ do as we say, Mr. Riddle, or- "  
"Or **_what?_** You'll- ah- dispose of me? You forget, Debbie, there are more people who have an invested interest in seeing me live."  
"You overestimate your wort-"

"I used to be _Harry Potter_, love," he cuts in. At this, Tom does giggle, drunk on Harry's flamboyant irreverence. Harry examines his nails. Runs his fingers through his hair. Smiles, carelessly. "Haven't you heard of Dumbledore?"  
"Now. Don't make me ask again, Deb. Why Mr. Patil?"

* * *

**Two months ago**

The man at the end of Harry/Riddle's knife sweats profusely, but his face is strangely calm.  
"I like you, Mr. Patil."  
Mr. Patil even has the presence to raise a questioning eyebrow.  
"You're sharp," Harry shrugs. "Good at your job. You've raised a smart couple of girls."

The target sucks in a sharp breath.

"Don't worry, Pankaj- can I call you Pankaj? - the girls aren't on my list."  
He exhales.

"Now, because I like you, I'm not going to kill you. And because I'm a nice guy, I'm going to do you a favour."

* * *

**One month ago**

"One is an ex-Death eater, another is a half-goblin with a dozen murder charges that never stuck, and a third is a shape-shifting, blindly loyal war-witch. Tell me if I'm getting any of this wrong."

Hermione smiles, a little bleak. "They aren't that bad. Flitwick was actually a champion duelist, before the alleged homicide charges. McGonagall is a reputed Tranfiguration mistress, not _just_ an animagus, has taught some of the foremost minds in Metamorphosis and is regularly published in the Anima Journals. Besides, there's Vector, whose research in runic barriers prevented a German terrorist attack on the American ministry last year; Sprout, who was on the team of healers who devised a cure to dragon pox. These are… good teachers, Harry. You may not respect them, but there's a great deal to learn from them."

Harry flips through an old copy of Bathilda Bagshot's first-year Transfiguration textbook.

But when Tom begins saying the words of the text before Harry's reads them, reciting them as though rot, Harry's breath hitches unevenly. Their heart thunders.

That ugly question resurfaces. The question Harry hadn't dare ask since- since _imperio._

(tom. how do you _know_ this?)  
I- I- I don't **know!**

And, after a moment's pause-

Harry. Harry- _fuck, oh god-  
_(what?!)  
We can't go to Hogwarts.  
(...why?)  
Dumbledore. The most powerful Legilimens this side of the world. He'll... figure it out. We- we _**can't**__-_

Tom grows frantic, garbled, words reducing to a messy blur of shivering, trembling _fright_, a wounded animal bleating in the shadows of Harry's mind, and Harry hates it- _hates it, hates the rancid taste of Tom's fear in the back of his throat- _and he barely _thinks_, before he's speaking, words falling out of his mouth, clipped and bruised-

"Granger."  
"Yeah?"  
"What if I didn't want to go to Hogwarts?"

Her eyes widen, but briefly, invisible to anyone not as watchful as Harry, as Tom. The Offices have trained her well.  
"Yes," she says. "Maybe..." Her gaze grows unfocused.  
"What do you have in mind?"  
When she snaps back to the here, there is something watchful about her; wary.  
"It might... hurt."

* * *

**Now**

He examines the envelope, his magic surge outward, searching for traps and enchantments in the folded parchment. Pulling a Swiss Army knife from the pocket of his hoodie, he slices open the paper, sliding the letter out, ignoring the sweat that trails down his back, courtesy of the desert's sticky-summer-heat.

_Dear Mr. Potter, _it reads. The emerald ink is an eerie reflection of Harry's own eyes.  
_We are please to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  
_Harry's blood runs cold.

* * *

**a/n:  
**There is so much plot happening in the background that I haven't explained. I'm ashamed of myself, promise.  
Review, favourite, follow and all that, kay? I owe you muffins. Virtual muffins.

PS Have you noticed how I regularly forget that Harry's 10 and Tom's actually nearly 70? #problems ._.


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